There is a famous scene in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver when Robert De Niro’s character Travis is pretending to have a conversation looking in the mirror and repeatedly saying “Are you talking to me?”. I think about this scene every time I use a voice active device – Hey, are you talking to me? Yes, I am, but are you listening?
Voice command,… Read More
If you are like me, you will get a 5G phone because of the high bandwidth it offers. However, there is a lot more to 5G than just fast data. In fact, one of the appealing features of 5G is low bandwidth communication. This is useful for edge devices that perform infrequent and low volume data transfers and depend on long battery life. Prior… Read More
Some amazing hardware is being designed to accelerate AI/ML, most of which features large numbers of MAC units. Given that MAC units are like the lego blocks of digital math, they are also useful for a number of other applications. System designers are waking up to the idea of repurposing AI accelerators for DSP functions such as … Read More
Machine Learning (ML) has become extremely important for many computing applications, especially ones that involve interacting with the physical world. Along with this trend has come the development of many specialized ML processors for cloud and mobile applications. These chips work fine in the cloud or even in cars or phones,… Read More
The transition to the digital age from a mostly analog world really began with the invention of the A-to-D and D-to-A converters. However scalar processors can easily be overwhelmed by the copious data produced by something as simple as an audio stream. To solve this problem and to really jumpstart the digital age, the development… Read More
SLAM – simultaneous localization and mapping – is critical for mobile robotics and VR/AR headsets among other applications, all of which typically operate indoors where GPS or inertial measurement units are either ineffective or insufficiently accurate. SLAM is a chicken and egg problem in which the system needs to map its environment… Read More
We are all pretty familiar with augmented reality, where real world images are overlaid with computer generated images, graphics and even audio. Of course, our first exposure to augmented reality might have been images of heads up displays in fighter jets or perhaps in the movie The Terminator. Augmented reality is moving rapidly… Read More
I enjoyed reading Eric Esteve’s article “ French Tech at CES, 2nd country after USA with 274 Start-Up at Eureka Park!” It brought back happy memories of my time at EVE until Synopsys purchased it in 2012.Here is another intriguing story by a French startup named VSORA and founded by Khaled Maalej with a team of scientists and engineers.… Read More
Voice-based control is arguably becoming another killer app, or killer app-enabler in the very significant shifts we are seeing in automation. After a bumpy start in car feature control (for navigation, phone calls, etc) and early smartphone “intelligent” assistants, voice-based interfaces now seem to be maturing into a genuinely… Read More
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is in its 50th year believe it or not! The first one was in New York (1967) with 250 exhibitors and 17,500 attendees. Portable radios and TVs were all the rage followed by VCRs in 1970 and camcorders and compact discs in 1981. This year there will be 3,900+ exhibits and an estimated 170,000 attendees… Read More
